Sunday, November 9, 2008

When a presidential nominee selects a running mate, the VP candidate always arrives with an entourage. Like any merger, staff rivalries are bound to surface, especially during the stresses of a heated campaign. When a ticket loses, post-mortem finger pointing is inevitable. So the charges against Sarah Palin leaked to the press by unnamed McCain staffers hardly come as a surprise.

All the same, it’s interesting to note that smears and character assassination have become so habitual to Republican campaigners that they are willing to turn the flamethrowers on one of their own. In this case, the friendly fire is intentional.

As a result, I find myself in the mystifying position of feeling sorry for Sarah Palin. At least when the Dems were questioning Governor Palin’s fitness to lead the nation, they did so publicly—not as unnamed sources. There is no way to substantiate the claims that Palin believed Africa was a nation and not a continent, or that she could not name the NAFTA nations.

I probably should not be surprised by the GOP smears on one of its own. Habits die hard—especially bad ones.

My novels in brief

America Libre,House Dividedand Pancho Land imagine a nightmarish, not-too-distant future when tensions between Hispanic separatists and Anglo supremacists ignite an ethnic conflict that leads to an armed insurrection seeking to redraw the borders of the United States. A cautionary tale, The Class H Trilogy is a wake-up call to the dangers of bigotry and extremism in a growing ethnic gulf.

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Could it happen here?

When I began writing America Libre in 2004, some thought the book’s premise was unrealistic. An uprising by Hispanics? The idea seemed far-fetched, they said. Today, the skeptics are no longer so certain. I posed the nightmare scenario of America Libre as a wake up call to the dangers of extremism - on all sides of this explosive issue. Hispanic immigration is a hotly debated topic today. Yet it is only the tip of the iceberg. Over the next decade, three other factors will prove equally significant. READ MORE